• Bruno Finger@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Actually that’s a modern measurement concept based on the original meter. By using this concept, the size of a meter is tied to absolute terms in physics that “anyone” could measure with the right tools, while the original concept was based on a physical object called the meter, which is subject to many things such as heat dilation for example making it not accurate, and if the original object was lost we would not have a way to tell what is a meter (conceptually speaking of course).

    The foot on the other hand (lol) is traditionally based on the king’s foot size. This of course depends on which country (or realm?), and to make matters worst, who’s the king at the time, because yes the official measure would change based on that too.

    Of course that’s not how it is today, but we can say the original foot was lost long ago.

    • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Ditto for the original meter. We sure are lucky that an approximation of the measurement is built into the name of the foot. It’s frighteningly European to have a measurement name that roughly translates to “measure”

      Hey, how many measures is that?